


There Will Be Love: The Prologue

by Turandokht



Series: The Dominion of the Sword -- A Bellamione Tale [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Military, Alternate Universe - Voldemort Wins, BAMF Hermione Granger, Black Family-centric (Harry Potter), Cynical Hermione, Desire, F/F, Femslash, Implied Relationships, Koldovstoretz (Harry Potter), Lesbians, Military, POV Hermione Granger, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, War, Women in the Military, grey hermione
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:27:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28528449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turandokht/pseuds/Turandokht
Summary: This was the prologue I created for "There Will Be Love". Unfortunately, it caused an awful databasing issue which deleted and destroyed Chapter 1, "The Caspian", first by deleting the title (which I tried to fix several times without success and finally just named both chapters to have the same title, Prologue/Caspian). Then it got worse—the database overwrote the entirety of Chapter 1, so I had two prologues followed by Chapter 2. When I deleted the first prologue to fix this, the second prologue was /also/ deleted, and rather than risk something catastrophic to my story, I decided to combine Chapters 1 and 2. Those chapters are now duplicated themselves (albeit with nothing missing), so I am just posting the prologue separately as its own short story.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Bellatrix Black Lestrange
Series: The Dominion of the Sword -- A Bellamione Tale [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1840054
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9
Collections: Bellamione, Crossgenerational Slash, Focus on Female Characters





	There Will Be Love: The Prologue

Almost five years after the Battle of Hogwarts ended in Harry Potter's death and the triumph of Lord Voldemort, Hermione Granger and her surviving friends battle to keep hope alive in a post-apocalyptic world where Muggles now know about magic. Fighting alongside the wizards of Koldovstoretz and Muggle forces in a never-ending genocidal war, Hermione will find herself confronted with a choice that may restore the hope of victory to the free world, and present her with an impossible love.

_Lay by your pleading,  
The Law lies bleeding  
Burn all your studies  
And throw out your reading_

_Small power the word has,  
And can afford us  
Not half so much privilege  
As a sword does _

\- From "The Power (or Dominion) of the Sword", an English Cavalier Ballad.

**Prologue**

The first time you slept in the field, it was like a camping trip. There was a lousy smell that seemed like a whiff of hell in the distance, and the choking fumes of fuel, and the tea was boiled on exhaust, but it was _exciting._ They were going to make a difference. They were being brave and strong. The rules were harsh, but they weren't about being nice or proper. They were enforced by wand and gun and nobody who enforced them cared if you drank or smoke or made dirty jokes while in your bedroll. And Hermione had always been good with rules, anyway; military order and discipline was easy enough for her to learn.

The happy confidence quickly melted away. The sky could not be seen, the stars were obscured by some brew of smog and ice fog, the wind howled across the steppe, and when she bedded down, her mind went to other places. The howl of the wind across their camp seemed to carry her away to memories that she could not resist, that she could not ever really put aside.

On the loess plateau, with the immense mass of fertile dirt eroding away below them, with the distant thunder in the air, she thought back in the moment before sleep to Alma-Ata. To the moment she realised that, no, it was the women that she wanted, and that was the real reason behind her breakup with Ron.

To the moment where she drifted off into the memory of the first time that need had awakened in her. Too embarrassing to ever tell _anyone._ To admit that when that pain was at its greatest, when that knife made the mark of shame she still wanted to hide at all costs, the reason she couldn't easily bring herself to share a _banya_ with her friends… That was when she had felt the warmth in those thighs over her own body, so strong. That she had seen the look in those eyes, mad, but almost tender.

That she had realised that she was attracted to women _then,_ not in a dingy strip-club in Alma-Ata playing at being one of the boys with all of her new friends, muggle and wizard, but then, on the worst night of her life. It still brought her nightmares to know that she could look back and see, clearly, that she had experienced, even in her darkest moment, a certain kind of shameful and embarrassing animal attraction to Bellatrix Lestrange.

Four years on, she had broken up with Ron after that bitter, horrible night in Chisinau. She had accepted herself. But only in intellectual principle: _Blah, blah, I'm a lesbian, it's genetic, I can't help it, it's okay._

Privately, she never intended to help it or accept it. She tossed and twisted in her bedroll until one of her friends came over to check on her. The nightmare was the same as it had often been. She didn't want to let it go. She wanted to die alone, but maybe covered in the blood of her enemies. That was a good sentiment for the times, wasn't it? There was very little hope in the world, and Hermione saved hers for a future in which Voldemort did not rule humanity. For herself? Live or die, it didn't matter. 

Hermione didn't get any sleep that night anyway. Some enemy action took place in the night--the sharp combination of spells flung in the dark, magical energy flaring, and the roar of artillery, the sharp clatter of the machine-gun. In another hour, they were all waking up to shouts and orders and the sound of reserves coming up, the tanks rattling like thunder. There was a war to fight, after all, and as long as she had her shit sorted out enough to wield a wand at the front, that was what really mattered.

* * *

Notes:

Alma-Ata was the original name of the largest city in Kazakhstan, which is now called Almaty. City names are changed often for political reasons in the CIS countries.


End file.
